Beginning Again

I realize that it has been quite a while since I’ve posted to Praying Daily. Since my last post on July 18 I have been in Georgia at our home on Jackson Lake, and while there I decided to wean myself away from the computer as much as possible. My days were filled with ample reading, a good bit of sweaty manual labor around the house, rounds of morning and evening prayer with June, some contemplative silence, evening boat rides, visits from family and friends, and Sunday Eucharists at St. John Lutheran Church in Griffin, Georgia. Importantly, I had a lot of time to reacquaint myself with Flannery O'Connor, her stories, novels, and criticism of and about her. I was able to visit several times her home at the Andalusia, the dairy farm near Milledgeville, Georgia. One day I drove over to see the manuscript collection at Georgia State College and University. All of which is to say that while absent from Praying Daily here, I was able to find refreshment with family, friends, reading, and prayer. And, oh yes, with my son, pastor, and three other dear friends, I went to Haiti for a week in late July and early August. Now it’s time to return to Praying Daily and begin again our sharing of times and things prayerful.

You can expect not a few words from Flannery O’Connor in the coming days, and I’ll begin this blog renewal with one now. While at Andalusia, I bought a Flannery O’Connor Perpetual Calendar; each day it gives the reader either a quotation (sometimes with a sketchy cartoon), usually something from her letters, her stories and novels, or from the talks she gave at various universities and assorted literary groups. On August 18, here’s what the calendar gave us:

Isn’t that so? Well, it must be; I've copied it into my chapbook.